Today's up-and-coming supply chain professionals are no-nonsense, results-oriented types who are eager to make a splash. But recruiters take note: It's going to take more than money to snag one.
Mark Solomon joined DC VELOCITY as senior editor in August 2008, and was promoted to his current position on January 1, 2015. He has spent more than 30 years in the transportation, logistics and supply chain management fields as a journalist and public relations professional. From 1989 to 1994, he worked in Washington as a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, covering the aviation and trucking industries, the Department of Transportation, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he worked for Traffic World for seven years in a similar role. From 1994 to 2008, Mr. Solomon ran Media-Based Solutions, a public relations firm based in Atlanta. He graduated in 1978 with a B.A. in journalism from The American University in Washington, D.C.
If the recruitment process for supply chain management professionals were conducted like the National Football League draft, then William Smith might be considered a first-round pick.
Smith, 22, will graduate in December from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with two degrees. One is in logistics with a concentration in international business. The other is in Spanish.
In theory, Smith sits in the young logistician's version of the "sweet spot." Not only does he enter a field growing in corporate and geographic relevance, but he also possesses the bilingual skills that will enable him to more easily assimilate into foreign markets and cultures than his unilingual peers.
So what will it take to hire Smith, who is just now starting to chart his career path and has yet to receive any job offers? More to the point, what will it take to retain him?
Recruiters may be interested to know that in Smith's case, it's not about the money. Rather, it's about having the freedom and the autonomy to change the game.
"I would like to have the authority to come up with unique solutions to problems and challenges I'm presented with," he says. "I'd like to know that my perspectives and contribution are making a difference for my company and its customers."
Asked where he puts financial compensation on the priority list, Smith replies, "This is my career. I want to have more fulfillment than just financial well-being."
It's not about the money
Meet the "newbies" of the supply chain, a paradox in progress. They possess the tech savvy and global orientation you'd expect of today's young professionals. They are no-nonsense, results-oriented types who will demand the flexibility—largely enabled by mobile office technology—to do it their way.
At the same time, they seek jobs that offer the promise of stability and continuity, a trait that runs counter to the conventional wisdom about the newest generation of workers. Many take for granted that they will be able to advance within their chosen organization. And they expect to make an impact that goes beyond their bank accounts.
Money is just a small slice of the pie, according to those interviewed for this story. "At this age, you really don't need to make that much of it," says Dian Cui, a 2009 industrial engineering graduate of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and today a supply chain analyst for the Nova Scotia Liquor Corp. in Halifax.
Kevin Remillard, a 2010 Georgia Southern University graduate recently hired by third-party logistics giant C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., says that "money wasn't my main concern" in accepting Robinson's offer over three others. The key factor, he says, was that Robinson was a "company I could see being with one, five, or 10 years out."
Ironically, two Robinson executives say that while they tout the company's stability and longevity—Robinson was founded in 1905—in interviews and at job fairs, the message seems to be lost on many young people. "It kind of just flies by them. I don't think it's looked at too closely," says Eric Mesenburg, the company's director of recruiting.
Laura Gillund, Robinson's vice president of human resources, says she hears more discussion about workforce stability from the parents of college graduates than from the graduates themselves. The subject also comes up more frequently with job seekers in their late 20s and early 30s with a decade of experience under their belts, she adds.
Cui believes job seekers in their early 20s are less likely to be concerned about their long-term prospects with an employer than their older counterparts are. He says that many companies with relatively small supply chain operations expect newly minted hires to stay two or three years, gain experience while delivering productivity, and then move on to a larger organization. Cui says he's happy with his employer and his current position but adds he would eventually like to return to his native China and apply his skills there.
Charlie Crawford, who is enrolled in the graduate program in industrial engineering at Virginia Tech, says the craving for stability may be more a reflection of uncertain economic conditions than any altruistic urges. "It's a sign of the times," he says.
For his part, Crawford says he would prefer a stable career path, but with his own imprimatur. "Many companies tout rotational programs, but that doesn't interest me," he says. "I want to know what the company has for me now, and what the options are for me one or two years from now. I want to know what I am going to be doing."
Crawford, who did stints at two companies during his college years and was part of a team that won a distribution center design award in 2008 from the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA), says he will not join a company that doesn't have defined career paths for its employees. "If a company doesn't have a vision for where this person is going, then [the individual] will probably not get there," he says.
Room at the top?
In a tough job market, employers can be selective. For example, Starbucks Coffee Co., which has launched a global effort to build a high-level personnel pipeline to support its supply chain for the next 15 to 20 years, will only consider the top 10 percent of the graduating class of the schools it plans to work with, according to Shawn Simmons, Starbucks' vice president, partner resources for supply chain operations.
The ideal candidates—Starbucks plans to hire and groom eight to 12 people per year for the foreseeable future—will have exposure to Fortune 500 organizations either through prior work experience or internships, must have demonstrated leadership in previous roles, and be open to accepting international as well as domestic positions, Simmons says.
Whether it be at Starbucks or other companies its size, today's college graduates or graduates-in-waiting may have to bide their time before assuming high-ranking leadership roles. A 2009 survey by Ohio State University found that the average age range for directors and vice presidents was 45 to 49. Although that was down a bit from the 50- to 55-year range reported in prior studies, there were more over-55 executives holding senior management titles than in years past, the survey found.
For those worried about a lack of young blood to replace today's upper echelon, Crawford has some encouraging news. In addition to the students who are pursuing formal studies in logistics, he says, there will be plenty of others who are open to careers in the profession. Many of his peers have developed an interest in logistics and supply chain management not because of an affinity for the discipline itself, but for its effect on so-called vertical fields like health care and automotive.
"The supply chain is expanding into many different areas of operation," he says. "We will see people taking standard concepts and applying them in different ways. Someone who is interested in health care but not in supply chain management now finds [the supply chain] stimulating because of the impact it has on that person's chosen field."
The San Francisco tech startup Vooma has raised $16 million in venture funding for its artificial intelligence (AI) platform designed for freight brokers and carriers, the company said today.
The backing came from a $13 million boost in “series A” funding led by Craft Ventures, which followed an earlier seed round of $3.6 million led by Index Ventures with participation from angel investors including founders and executives from major logistics and technology companies such as Motive, Project44, Ryder, and Uber Freight.
Founded in 2023, the firm has built “Vooma Agents,” which it calls a multi-channel AI platform for logistics. The system uses various agents to operate across email, text and voice channels, allowing for automation in workflows that were previously unaddressable by existing systems. According to Vooma, its platform lets logistics companies scale up their operations by reducing time spent on tedious and manual work and creating space to solve real logistical challenges, while also investing in critical relationships.
The company’s solutions include: Vooma Quote, which identifies quotes and drafts email responses, Vooma Build, a data-entry assistant for load building, and Vooma Voice, which can make and receive calls for brokers and carriers. Additional options are: Vooma Insights and the future releases of Vooma Agent and Vooma Schedule.
“The United States moves approximately 11.5 billion tons of truckloads annually, and moving freight from point A to B requires hundreds of touchpoints between shippers, brokers and carriers,” Vooma co-founder, who is the former CEO of ASG LogisTech, said in a release. “By introducing AI that fits naturally into existing systems, workflows and communication channels used across the industry, we are meaningfully reducing the tasks people dislike and freeing up their time and headspace for more meaningful and complex challenges.”
The new funding brings Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion, while maintaining the e-commerce giant’s position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic. The partnership was launched in 2023, when Amazon invested its first $4 billion round in the firm.
Anthropic’s “Claude” family of AI assistant models is available on AWS’s Amazon Bedrock, which is a cloud-based managed service that lets companies build specialized generative AI applications by choosing from an array of foundation models (FMs) developed by AI providers like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, Stability AI, and Amazon itself.
According to Amazon, tens of thousands of customers, from startups to enterprises and government institutions, are currently running their generative AI workloads using Anthropic’s models in the AWS cloud. Those GenAI tools are powering tasks such as customer service chatbots, coding assistants, translation applications, drug discovery, engineering design, and complex business processes.
"The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable," Matt Garman, AWS CEO, said in a release. "By continuing to deploy Anthropic models in Amazon Bedrock and collaborating with Anthropic on the development of our custom Trainium chips, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies. We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration."
The Dutch ship building company Concordia Damen has worked with four partner firms to build two specialized vessels that will serve the offshore wind industry by transporting large, and ever growing, wind turbine components, the company said today.
The first ship, Rotra Horizon, launched yesterday at Jiangsu Zhenjiang Shipyard, and its sister ship, Rotra Futura, is expected to be delivered to client Amasus in 2025. The project involved a five-way collaboration between Concordia Damen and Amasus, deugro Danmark, Siemens Gamesa, and DEKC Maritime.
The design of the 550-foot Rotra Futura and Rotra Horizon builds on the previous vessels Rotra Mare and Rotra Vente, which were also developed by Concordia Damen, and have been operating since 2016. However, the new vessels are equipped for the latest generation of wind turbine components, which are becoming larger and heavier. They can handle that increased load with a Roll-On/Roll-Off (RO/RO) design, specialized ramps, and three Liebherr cranes, allowing turbine blades to be stowed in three tiers, providing greater flexibility in loading methods and cargo configurations.
“For the Rotra Futura and Rotra Horizon, we, along with our partners, have focused extensively on energy savings and an environmentally friendly design,” Concordia Damen Managing Director Chris Kornet said in a release. “The aerodynamic and hydro-optimized hull design, combined with a special low-resistance coating, contributes to lower fuel consumption. Furthermore, the vessels are equipped with an advanced Wärtsilä main engine, which consumes 15 percent less fuel and has a smaller CO₂ emission footprint than current standards.”
Specifically, loaded import volume rose 11.2% in October 2024, compared to October 2023, as port operators processed 81,498 TEUs (twenty-foot containers), versus 73,281 TEUs in 2023, the port said today.
“Overall, the Port’s loaded import cargo is trending towards its pre-pandemic level,” Port of Oakland Maritime Director Bryan Brandes said in a release. “This steady increase in import volume in 2024 is an encouraging trend. We are also seeing a rise in US agricultural exports through Oakland. Thanks to refrigerated warehousing on Port property near the maritime terminals and convenient truck and rail access, we are well-positioned to continue to grow ag export cargo volume through the Oakland Seaport.”
Looking deeper into its October statistics, loaded exports declined 3.4%, registering 66,649 TEUs in October 2024, compared to 68,974 TEUs in October 2023. Despite that slight decline, the category has grown 6.7% between January and October 2024 compared to the same period last year.
In fact, Oakland’s exports have been declining over the past decade, a long-term trend that is largely due to the reduction in demand for recycled paper exports. However, agricultural exports have made up for some of the export losses from paper, the port said.
For the fourth quarter, empty exports bumped up 30.6%. Port operators processed 29,750 TEUs in October 2024, compared to 22,775 TEUs in October 2023. And empty imports increased 15.3%, with 15,682 TEUs transiting Port facilities in October 2024, in contrast to 13,597 TEUs in October 2023.
A growing number of organizations are identifying ways to use GenAI to streamline their operations and accelerate innovation, using that new automation and efficiency to cut costs, carry out tasks faster and more accurately, and foster the creation of new products and services for additional revenue streams. That was the conclusion from ISG’s “2024 ISG Provider Lens global Generative AI Services” report.
The most rapid development of enterprise GenAI projects today is happening on text-based applications, primarily due to relatively simple interfaces, rapid ROI, and broad usefulness. Companies have been especially aggressive in implementing chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs), which can provide personalized assistance, customer support, and automated communication on a massive scale, ISG said.
However, most organizations have yet to tap GenAI’s potential for applications based on images, audio, video and data, the report says. Multimodal GenAI is still evolving toward mainstream adoption, but use cases are rapidly emerging, and with ongoing advances in neural networks and deep learning, they are expected to become highly integrated and sophisticated soon.
Future GenAI projects will also be more customized, as the sector sees a major shift from fine-tuning of LLMs to smaller models that serve specific industries, such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, ISG says. Enterprises and service providers increasingly recognize that customized, domain-specific AI models offer significant advantages in terms of cost, scalability, and performance. Customized GenAI can also deliver on demands like the need for privacy and security, specialization of tasks, and integration of AI into existing operations.